


I'll put the lid on the jar when it's shut

by Rustyanklebraclet



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 10x12, Character Study, Family Reunions, Gen, Self-Indulgent, Sibling Bonding, Sort Of, Wedding Fluff, i miss mandy thats what this is all about, semi canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23628241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rustyanklebraclet/pseuds/Rustyanklebraclet
Summary: “Imagine what would happen if someone were to tell, like, 2008 Mickey about this.”“I would have committed fucking homicide.”A surprise guest shows up at the wedding. Relatively canon compliant rewrite of 10x12.
Relationships: Debbie Gallagher & Mandy Milkovich, Debbie Gallagher & Mickey Milkovich, Debbie Gallagher/Sandy Milkovich, Ian Gallagher & Mandy Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, Lip Gallagher/Mandy Milkovich (mentioned), Mandy Milkovich & Mickey Milkovich, Mickey Milkovich & Sandy Milkovich
Comments: 6
Kudos: 196





	I'll put the lid on the jar when it's shut

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because i binged shameless in a week and a half and i was so sad Mandy wasn't at the wedding. I get why, there was already so much going on in that episode, plus she probably would have distracted from Lip's storyline and all. but i still miss her, and i'm still sad she missed her dumb gay brother marry her dumb gay best friend.
> 
> The title is from bottom by mcafferty because?? oh my god angry repressed bottom anthem i feel like it would be criminal to not use it to title a mickey-centric fic.
> 
> Also this isn't super relavant but i feel the need to mention that i 100% headcannon that tiny baby semi-repressed bisexual Debs had a massive crush on Mandy. 
> 
> Anyways enjoy this thinly-veiled excuse for me to write about Mandy because!! i miss my girl :(
> 
> ***edit 07/15/2020 - i should have done this ages ago, but i honestly forgot abput this fic. the song that this is named after id by mccafferty, the lead singer of which (nick harktop) is piece of shit. i didnt know this at the time of titling the fic. its not relavant to the fic, really, but if you are a mccafferty fan like i was, please do your research.

“And you’re sure everyone is here?”

“Holy fuck, yes, I’m sure. Put your panties on.” Sandy says, rolling her eyes as she adjusts Mickey’s tie.

“Where the fuck is Gallagher?”

“Can you please calm the fuck down? He’s talking to his brother.”

Mickey shoves Sandy off him as she tries to fix his hair, and does it himself.

“Can _you_ calm down and stop trying to fucking groom me?”

“ _Groom_ you?”

Mickey glares at her.

“Yeah, sorry. I’ll stop.”

Mickey looks around and feels sort of bad about snapping at her. He’s tense about the looming threat of Terry, they all are. But when he looks over at his cousin, he knows there are no hard feelings.

“Imagine what would happen if someone were to tell, like, 2008 Mickey about this.”

“I would have committed fucking homicide.”

“ _Homo-cide_ , you mean,” She says with a grin, turning to face him. He looks down at her and frowns before shoving her again as she laughs at her own stupid joke.

From across the room, Iggy waves, and makes a weird sort of hand gesture to Sandy. She gives him a thumbs-up, and he hurries off.

“What the fuck was that?” asks Mickey.

“There's, um, a guest here for you,” she says with that conniving goddamn smile of hers, and it’s like they’re kids again, telling each other secrets and sharing stolen cigarettes.

And then she nods to somewhere behind him, and he turns around to see none other than his sister.

She gives a nervous smile, and waves. Sandy claps him on the back.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says, walking off.

Mickey doesn’t know what to say. 

He settles for “you’re not blonde anymore”

She laughs, and shrugs. “Got tired of maintaining it. You’re not in prison.”

It’s his turn to laugh and shrug, and he realizes with a start that despite their time apart, they still have frighteningly identical mannerisms. “I’m a law-abiding citizen now. I pay taxes ‘n everything.”

“Bullshit”

“Yeah, I don’t know why I said that. Almost killed my p.o. less than a week after getting out.”

“Ian stop you?”

“Nah, someone else got to her first.”

“No shit?” she says, laughing. And there's something different about her laugh then all those years before. It’s lighter. She seems happy, too. Happier than she ever was living in their shitty house with their shitty family.

“I heard dad burned the first place down.”

“Yeah. and then he showed up at the Gallaghers this morning and pulled a gun on me.”

She makes a face in response, but it definitely isn’t one of shock.

“What did you do?”

“Pulled out mine, what the fuck do you think I did?”

She laughs in an exasperated sort of way.

“Missed you” he says

“Never thought I’d hear you say anything like that.”

“The goddamn Gallaghers turned me soft. Incase you couldn’t tell from the fact that our father is still alive”

“What did they have to do? Cuff you to a post out back?”

“The drier, actually.”

They both laugh at this, before she squints at him, grabbing his chin and turning his face to examine the bruise next to his eye.

“He give you the shiner?”

“Who, pops? Nah, it was my husband-to-be, in fact.”

“You two are so romantic.”

Mickey smiles. “Fuck off,” he says, punching her in the arm.

“I missed you too, by the way. We got time for a smoke?”

“You do not.” says Sandy, who has materialized behind Mickey.

Mandy looks at Mickey, and before he has time to protest, she's hugging him. She’s been taller than him for years, and her stupidly high heels don’t help his case, so it’s kind of awkward. But he doesn’t fight it. 

He’d forgotten how much he missed her. When Ian told him about seeing her while Mickey was in prison, it made his heart ache, that his baby sister got in a pinch (exactly the kind of pinch he’s equipped to help with, mind you) and there was nothing he could do to help. But seeing her now, some of that guilt fades.

“Ian know she’s here?” he says to Sandy as his sister finds her seat.

“Don’t think so,” says Sandy “Now go get married, douchebag.”

\---

After the ceremony, Ian and Mickey are making small talk with a few friends of Ian’s (Which, what the fuck? Since when does Ian have normal, well-adjusted, minimally-traumatized-adult-human-being friends? People would assume spending four and a half years being in prison, then a fugitive in Mexico, and then in prison again would change you, but Mickey’s not the one actively hanging out with vegans.). His sister, who he realizes with a start doesn’t look like a gangly, awkward teenage girl anymore, and instead, a reasonably normal adult woman, awkwardly creeps up behind the group of people whose names Mickey will never remember. She does this weird little grimace and awkward wave, and Ian’s face lights up like the fucking sun as he cuts himself off mid-sentence.

“What the fuck?” he calls excitedly (though it borders on a fucking squeal) and the small group of people step aside confusedly as they more or less throw themselves at each other. 

Much later, Ian and Mandy are over in a corner, talking to each other, looking ridiculously happy to see each other.

“I didn’t know the two of them were so close,” says Sandy (who really needs to stop sneaking up on him, holy fuck)

“Yeah. closer than we ever were, despite growing up in the same house and shit. Used to pretend to be dating, actually, before she got together with his brother.”

Sandy makes a noise of vague acknowledgement.

“Did you invite her?” he asks. Sandy had never really cared for her when they were younger, and vice versa. He wasn’t really sure how Sandy would have even found her.

“I did,” says Debbie, who he hadn’t even realized was standing on the other side of his cousin, arms linked (which is a conversation that he needs to have with Sandy at some point, but it can wait.)

“How?” he asks, but part of him doesn’t really want to know. She’s always been one of his favourites in their mess of a family (besides Ian), but part of that is because she’s got a massive ride-or-die complex with those she loves and a disregard of the law that almost reminds him of Mandy at that age. Meaning he’s a little wary of what she’s done to get his sister there.

She momentarily detaches herself from Sandy to pat him on the shoulder and smile in response.

“Alright then,” he says, looking back at Mandy and Ian.

\---

He dances with his sister, Sandy, whatever other Milkoviches weren’t inclined to pull a gun on him for liking it up the ass, and few of his old friends from when he was a greasy teenager in a trench coat shoplifting Gatorade and Pringles. One of them, Jamie, (a man that he once watched punch a guy out in the bathroom of a Subway, and proceed to step over his body to snort coke off the sink counter, and is now a father) dances with Mandy, spinning her around as they both laugh. Mickey finds himself grinning as he watches them.

He’s uncontrollably happy for her. He spent so much time thinking about how much Ian deserved to get out of their shitty neighbourhood when they were younger, that he never really spared a second thought for anyone else, let alone Mandy. But now if he had, he would have known in an instant that she deserved a different life more than most of the people he knew (himself included).

And she got it.

The song switches to something slow that he vaguely recognizes from the radio during his time working security, and he looks around to find Ian sat talking to Debbie. She gives him a little shove, and Ian comes over. Neither of them can really dance for shit, which was a concern Mickey and Sandy had voiced and Ian had dismissed. It’s immediately apparent that Ian should not have shrugged them off when they brought it up, but they make it work.

\---

Near the end of the reception, Mickey steps outside for a smoke. He doesn’t really like crowds unless he’s drunk or high, and even then he only tolerates them. He told Ian before he went, and Ian asked if he wanted him to come with him. When Mickey said no, Ian just smiled and kissed him and told him not to take too long, because he’s brilliant and wonderful and has always had this habit of just _getting it_ , and he’s unquestionably far too good for Mickey. 

He hears the door swing open and closed, and he prays to whatever’s out there that whoever it is isn’t going to talk to him.

“Can I bum a smoke?”

He turns to see Mandy leaning against the wall, toes curling on the pavement in her stockings, her heels in her hand.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, lighting it for her so she doesn’t have to put her ridiculous shoes down.

“He told me about you punching him down the stairs when I asked about his leg. You two are made for each other.”

“Fuck off,” says Mickey, but there's no bite to it.

“Everything’s changed so much. I really haven’t been properly back since Kenyatta, and, like, logically I was aware that everything hasn’t just been sitting still, gathering dust since then. But it’s still crazy. And Debbie, especially. I remember when she was just this weird little kid that I was teaching about self-defense and makeup and stuff. And now she’s, like, a full human being. I just, I can't believe it.”

“You hear about Gallagher?” he says, looking over at her as she rolls her eyes.

“I know you have this whole thing about how you’re gonna lose cool points if you refer to literally anyone by their first name, but sometimes you kind of-”

“Fucking hell, Fiona! Did you hear about Fiona?”

“Yeah.” says Mandy quietly, “Ian told me.”

“Good for her,” says Mickey. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud since he found out, even though it was his immediate reaction when Ian told him.

“Good for her.” Mandy echoes “I was always such a bitch to her, but I felt sorta bad about it. Even if she was kind of a bitch to me too. I really liked her.”

Mickey doesn’t respond, not really sure what to say. Instead, he asks “what about your boyfriend, you talk to him?”

“The real one, or the fake one?”

“The real one, dipshit,” he says, before looking over and seeing her grin, realizing she’s joking. 

“Yeah, he and Debbie met me at the L, actually.”

“What do you think about it all?”

“That kid’s gonna have an amazing fucking dad,” she pauses, clearly considering wheter she should say whatever it is that she’s thinking. ”His mom's a bitch, though.”

Mickey snorts. “Cheers to that,” he says, holding out his cigarette for her to bump. She does and they inhale at the same time.

They continue to smoke in silence for a moment. The door bursts open, and none other than Frank, with the owner of the restaurant practically attached to him, comes crashing through. He slams her up against the wall only a few feet from Mickey, and the two of them stare at the pair in disbelief as they violate every law against public indecency ever drafted.

“Hey, do ‘ya fucking mind?”

Frank surfaces, turning towards them and seemingly only just realizing that they’re there.

“Right. Sorry, kids,” he says, pulling her around a corner.

They share a look of disbelief as Mickey shakes his head and they both turn forwards again.

They’re silent for a moment, before Mandy's distinct lack of suspicious injuries occurs to him.

“I’m, uh, I’m glad you ditched your douchebag boyfriend.”

“Who, Lip? I think you kind of need to get over whatever you have against him now that you’re-”

“What? No. The one that used to fuckin’ beat on you.”

“Oh. Yeah. Me too.”

They share a smile, and with synchronization that would terrify an outsider, but doesn’t even occur to them, they extinguish the smokes on the wall at the same time, and go back into the building.

The door swings shut behind them. Mandy runs over to where Ian is dancing embarrassingly, and she grabs his hands so that they can dance embarrassingly together.

Sure, they’re still in a shitty old building on the south side that probably has roaches or rats or something else. And sure, for the time being, they’re still living in a shitty old house on the south side that _definitely_ has roaches and rats (and probably something else too), but they kind of did still “get out”.

When he was younger, he never would have wanted this, or at least, he wouldn’t have admitted it, not even to himself. He didn’t really ever even want out, not until long after he met Ian. his plan had sort of just been to end up like his dad, committing felonies and doing drugs with his brothers and cousins, and either rot away in a prison cell, or the shitty house that had been in the family for generations. Even after things with Ian started to be more than just about sex, that plan hadn’t really changed. It had just adjusted to make room for Ian, hoping his father would die or get locked up permanently at some point, and that the rest of them wouldn’t give enough of a shit to do anything, so long as he was decent at filing off a serial number, or, at the very least, rolling a joint and picking up beer.

Much later, wrapped up in a sleeping Ian, he thinks about something he’s pushed back to the mind for years. He thinks about that afternoon Ian had come over for his gun, and he thinks about laying in bed with him as his dad had walked through to use the bathroom. 

What he had said to Sandy earlier was wrong. 2008 Mickey would have simply ignored you, told you to fuck off. Probably wouldn’t have even believed you. But that Mickey, the terrified one, pressed beneath polyester sheets running through both available weapons for self-defense and excuses that wouldn’t result in his murder in his head. That’s the one that would have committed murder. Because that was the most afraid, and the most doubtful, of his own ability to be happy that he’s ever been.

 _Idiot_ he thinks, as though seventeen-year-old Mickey can somehow hear him, _be patient. Everything’ll turn out alright_.

He rolls his eyes at himself for being such a fag, and then curls into his husband and goes to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream into the void with me OR just request a fic you’d like to see on [Tumblr](https://readandwritesilver.tumblr.com/)
> 
> As always, any and all feedback is appreciated :)
> 
> Much love, Clover <3


End file.
